Boutiques

We've been bringing the outdoors inside for years but when it comes to having a magazine-perfect yard, I have a terrible sense of landscaping. I can't ever seem to get a garden to have that cottage-y welcoming look that I adore. So I usually bring the indoors outside. This is an old iron chandelier inside a birdcage on my back porch.

I have lots of flowers. But a second glance will give away my secret. They are stategically placed pots of flowers to create a garden feeling. The only thing that I have grown successfully is wildflowers! And sometimes I catch Neighbor Bob picking the weeds from them so I'm pretty sure that if the wildflowers flourish, it's not due to my own gardening skills.

My Midwest farmhouse is nowhere near a beach but I've picked up a few large shells over the years at Goodwill or Salvation Army. On a weathered bench the soft colors are just as pretty to me as flowers.